Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Monday August 03, 2009 @11:41AM
from the marvin-is-right-behind-it dept.

Matt_dk writes "The Opportunity rover has eyed an odd-shaped, dark rock, about 0.6 meters (2 feet) across on the surface of Mars, which may be a meteorite. The team spotted the rock called 'Block Island,' on July 18, 2009, in the opposite direction from which it was driving. The rover then backtracked some 250 meters (820 feet) to study it closer. Scientists will be testing the rock with the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer to get composition measurements and to confirm if indeed it is a meteorite."

even better is make one with lots of wireless accessories that can roll around in your yard, things like a camera, microphone, loud speaker, pepper spray, tazer, machinegun (well maybe not a machinegun)

Less than you'd think - the biggest damage is not caused by the impact, but by the supersonic shock wave of superheated air preceding the meteor. In a thin atmosphere like Mars, there's a much less pronounced shock wave.

Less than you'd think - the biggest damage is not caused by the impact, but by the supersonic shock wave of superheated air preceding the meteor. In a thin atmosphere like Mars, there's a much less pronounced shock wave.

What!?!?! Do you have any technical qualifications to make that statement? Because from a scientific standpoint, it is complete bullshit.

No way. I completely disagree with you. That's like saying that a bullet doesn't hurt you that much, but the shock it drives in the air ahead of it does all the damage. Think about the impedance mismatch between the shocked air and the solid ground... it makes no sense.

While you are correct that there is less of a shock in a thinner atmosphere, you have your dama

You need to consider the relative energy contained in the shock wave versus the kinetic energy of the moving solid object. The solid object driving the shock wins every time... and by a massive margin. That's why it is driving the shock wave in the atmosphere.

Clearly you have not yet seen the elusive Martian Stork Feather Meteorite.

I know nothing either, but maybe a big meteorite landed some distance away and made a crater and exploded flinging decent sized fragments out in all directions, this then bounced and rolled to a stop without ending up sitting in a crater.

Yeah, poor little guy doesn't have any humans to crush now that he is self aware.
Conversely, Opportunity became self aware and just sees the logic in following NASA's commands... no one ever explores this possibility in sci-fi...

A rock in the shape of a sphere or a cube or a tetrahedron...now that will be odd to havesuch a non odd shaped rock on Mars. Hence a non odd shaped rock is odd and an oddshaped rock is non odd. Go figure what was meant then

Because it stood out from the other rocks in the area. It's easy to imagine that they had Slashdot nitpickers in mind when they wrote that. "How could they tell it wasn't just a rock that's been sitting there for ages and ages?"

Perhaps it tumbled into position and the crater(s) are some distance away. It looks highly unusual as it is sitting too high up above the surface indicating that it was not deposited along with the rest of the material which *guessing* is why they were able to identify it as a possible meteorite from such a far away distance. Besides the color presumably not matching the surrounding material.

Look, Earthlings don't have a monopoly on flubbing rover landings or making unit conversion screw-ups. Fortunately we still have a monopoly on working Mars rovers! They though that since Mar's atmosphere is so weak they could completely ignore air friction and make the thing out of really light and cheap materials, and that melted hunk of slab is all that's left of their rover.

On the other hand, the Euporans are way ahead of us on exploring Neptune.

Citizens of our peaceful red world stand engorged with pride, as confirmation
has come in that the second of the robotic invaders from the blue
planet has been immobilized. K'Breel, speaker for the Council of Elders, made the announcement
from his flagship:

When we embarked upon this campaign, we
had no idea how long it would take. Having buried the first monstrosity
up to its wheels in the ashes of legions of the blue planet's soldiers, our
Kinetic Bombardment Force has turned its attention to the region infested by the monstrosity's evil twin. Rejoice, podmates, for even the blue planet's own puerile propaganda illustrates that their second robotic monstrosity now stands paralyzed with fear!

When a journalist suggested that the blue planet's robot had
merely paused to inspect a meteorite, K'Breel had the traitor's
gelsacs stapled to the heat shield of his flagship, and initiated
re-entry procedures.

Your proposed subject line is inferior. Doesn't matter if you won't read anything that might challenge your monopoly on whining. Your irrational hatred of passive voice is still foolish and wrong. That is not what your 4th grade writing teacher was trying to tell you.

Also, and go ahead and call me a pedant, but pedantry does not mean criticizing the style of something that is grammatically, syntactically, and semantically correct.